


Look it in the Eyes

by Carnivalgirl24



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Because I haven't read or seen it, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Light Angst, Next-Gen, Next-Gen angst, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Or close friendship, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Post-Canon, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Teddy was an angsty child but a more level-headed young man, They're very young anyway, You could see this as romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 02:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16008830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carnivalgirl24/pseuds/Carnivalgirl24
Summary: Thirteen-year-old Victoire wants the past to leave her alone. Teddy encourages her to take a different perspective.





	Look it in the Eyes

Victoire was exactly four years old when she first understood that her birthday was a day of national sadness. The person who let her understand this was the same person who would guide her throughout her life, her best friend, Teddy.

They had been told to stay in the dining room while Victoire’s parents set things up for her birthday. She hadn’t quite known what they were doing, but she knew well enough that it was a surprise for her. She still remembered, as an adult, the way the sun had lit up the room from the garden. She had stared down at her red party dress, her new party shoes and her fizzy drink in a paper party cup - a little treat before her big treat - and felt more happiness than she could contain.

‘Victoire?’ Teddy had been newly six years old, and spoke in an cool tone befitting his rank. ‘Do you know where my mummy and daddy are?’

She couldn't remember what she’d said, only how it felt. Teddy had only filled in the gaps when she’d insisted on it.

‘They’re at work,’ she’d said. Work was where her parents usually were when she couldn't find them, so she’d considered that work was probably where Teddy’s parents were.

‘No.’

‘They’re at shopping.’ If Maman wasn’t at work, this was probably where she was.

‘No. They live in another world, far away.’

‘I know! I’ve been there,’ Victoire said.

Teddy’s tone turned sharp and mean. ‘You haven’t.’

‘I have, I have! _Nous sommes allés à la France en vacances_.’  
  
‘What? No. Not France. They live in…in a magical world. And they’re not coming back.’

‘Why?’

‘They died. They died on this day. When I was a baby. I haven’t seen them since then, and I won’t see them again until I die, too.’

Teddy didn’t like to elaborate on what had happened next. He still felt guilty that he’d been the one to tell her, just because he’d been in the mood to upset her. Victoire’s birthday party continued without her for an hour while her dad rocked her in his arms, trying to calm her down, and apparently (this Maman told her) she was awake until early the next morning, terrified her parents would choose that mysterious other world over her.

She didn't blame Teddy; there was no point. If it hadn't been his parents she found out about first, it would have been the scars she saw every time she looked up at her father, or the stuck hand on the Weasley family clock, or her name, Victoire. She rarely told anyone when her birthday was, because they’d connect the day with the name and even in the most relaxed atmosphere she’d feel an almost physical tightening she never knew how to loosen.

Teddy, Victoire, James, Albus, Lily. Years would go by before anyone articulated how it felt for their generation, coming after it all. Feeling like you were young but not new, that your life had already been lived before you knew what was happening. Victoire felt like there were always ghosts walking beside her, and of course when she got to Hogwarts, there were.

When she was thirteen, she went through a phase of thinking about the ghosts almost constantly. Was life simpler in bygone times, or did they come out of the other side of life with the same desperate scream for answers as humans of modern times? How could they process hundreds of years of history, when everyone alive was struggling with the past fifteen?

Her school life was not much like Harry, Ron and Hermione’s. She had no friends who’d follow or lead her into adventures; she couldn’t even bring herself to ask them if they ever thought about the ghosts, it was just too cringe. So she built up her observations alone, and after some time it occurred to her that the ghosts weren’t living after all. Their minds were not alive to be altered by the real shifts of history; they haunted and were haunted by what thoughts and memories they’d formed when they were alive, and the rest was just another day. When she realised that, she envied them. She wanted what they had, for the past to be done and the present to leave her alone.

She began to avoid history. During History of Magic lessons, she forced herself into daydreams about beauty, new clothes, and travelling. When she saw pictures of her family from before she was born, she looked at them for a second, then moved her eyes away. Whenever a new book or article dissecting an aspect of the war was published, and she heard the older students discussing it, she asked them furiously (in her head) why they had to know more - wasn’t it enough that it was horrific? She didn’t know what was worse - that, or the schmaltzy radio tributes to ‘our finest moments’. _I hope it is the finest_ , she thought, _that means we’ll never see a time like it again._

When they organised a school trip to Godric’s Hollow, she pretended she had period pains and stayed in the Common Room, doing her nails. She still couldn’t get the varnish perfectly smooth like other girls, and it was great to have the time to practice with no one watching.

‘Are you seriously doing your nails?’

She looked up. Teddy was looming over her. He’d had a massive growth spurt that summer, and she was convinced he’d added some more just to be annoying.

‘No, I’m doing them ironically.’

‘You should be at Godric’s Hollow. Learning about the past.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘What, is it too scary?’

‘Piss off.’

He threw himself down next to her, spreading out his wiry, manly limbs. ‘People got killed, tortured, kidnapped, thrown in prison, but that wasn’t nearly so hard as taking two hours out of your day to learn about it.’

‘Why aren’t you there, then?’

‘I’ve been before,’ he said. ‘And I wanted to find you.’

She froze, not knowing how to react to that. Her default with Teddy was moody banter, especially now he was a cool prefect whom half her friends had a crush on. But she also hoped, when she was feeling low in self-esteem, that he would never be put off her completely. The reply, ‘Well, now you have’ came to her, but the moment to make her shot had past, so she pursed her lips and kept painting her nails.

‘I know what your problem is,’ he said.

‘I don’t wait long enough to apply the second coat.’

‘Well, yeah. But I meant about history.’

She let out some air through her nose. ‘Why do you care, anyway?’

‘Good question. Why do I care? Why. Do. I. Care?’ Teddy scrunched up his nose, and it took Victoire less than a second to see the thing that had changed in his face.

‘Your eyes,’ she said, ‘they look different. They look…like Bellatrix Lestrange’s eyes.’ Her face had been in so much media, Victoire could not think of evil without seeing it, or vice versa.

‘They are,’ he said. ‘She was my great-aunt, wasn’t she? The Lupin legacy has its challenges, but at least my dad didn’t choose to be a monster.’

Victoire sighed. ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’

‘I know,’ Teddy said. ‘You and me…we always understood each other. We have a connection. Like you’re my sister.’

Victoire felt her whole head and neck burn red at the idea. ‘Yeah?’

‘So let me hazard a guess at your problem. You’re afraid of history, especially the history of the war, because you know just enough about it to know that it tells us what we are. Especially when your parents and your birthday are all right there on the pages. When you look at the war, you see just what this society is capable of. What would have happened to you, to me, if we’d been born a few years earlier? So you’re afraid, so afraid you don’t know how to carry on, so you do what you always did with the monster under your bed and the ghosts in your wardrobe, and close your eyes and pretend its not there.’

In just the same way as when they were tiny children, she couldn’t tell whether he was being kind or cruel, and she bristled. ‘I’m not a baby. I’m a…’ The blush, which had been fading, rose up again. ‘I’m not a child any more. I don’t think the war is a monster under my bed. But it’s so endless and so awful and I just…why can’t I just have a normal life? Why did I have to end up in the middle of this?’

‘Because that’s not how it works,’ Teddy said, and she saw his eyes shift back to the green ones she knew as well as her own. ‘You’ve started Care of Magical Creatures, right? Do you think you could defend yourself against a Hippogriff, if nobody taught you how?’

‘No.’

‘It’s like that,’ he said. ‘It’s there whether you look at it or not. But learning a thing or two about it might save you from being trampled. Now, that’s pretty simplistic. Wars, disasters, political…messes, they’re like huge swarming destructive things, they’re like…Obscuruses.’

‘What the hell is an Obscurus?’

‘It’s a thing you do in Defence when you get to O.W.L.S. The point is…the more you study them, the more you realise there are hows and whats and whys in there. You see their ways. You see what controls them. You see what destroys them.’

He reached into the bag he had around his shoulders and handed her a book she hadn’t seen before, either in class or in the library.

_Secrets in the Stone: How the Second Wizarding War Began_

‘I’ve read this three times,’ he said. ‘I want you to have it. I’d really appreciate it if you read it.’

‘You think I’ll feel less afraid if I do?’ she said, half hopeful and half-sceptical.

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I’m terrified of war. But at least now I can look it in the face.’

‘Just like a Hippogriff.’ She stared at the book, feeling the weight of it in her hands. Its pages were scuffed, and its cover looked like it had been bent by accident. It also had an ink stain at the corner. It spoke of Teddy as much as it did of the war.

‘How do you cope, then?’ she asked. ‘With all this knowledge and all this fear?’

He stared ahead of them at the doors of the Common Room, probably thinking of the rest of the world, that for now seemed mercifully to be letting them have this time to themselves.

‘I read more, and when I’ve read too much, I find people to talk to. My gran, the teachers, Uncle Harry…you, if you want.’

‘If we do, can we also talk about nails?’

‘I don’t know. Do you think I’m ready?’

He held out his hand, and when she looked down at it she saw his nails were in their natural state, short and uneven. She smiled for the first time in a long while.

‘I’ll give you some reading material.’


End file.
